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Fostering blameless communication of Quality
Blame follows the incline of organisational hierarchy and in poor work cultures it flows down unfiltered & unmanaged. Effective mid-level Engineering Managers are like lightning conductors, absorbing that blame when it comes down the incline and ensuring that the Team’s productivity is impervious to it (but not at the cost of the Team continuously reflecting… Continue reading
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Observability – advocacy heuristics for Testers/Devs “new” to the system
One of the hallmarks of a highly observable system is that it enables new users to debug problems & find root causes faster i.e. shorten the learning curve for experienced Testers/Devs/Support Engineers new to that system. However, as one gets more knowledgeable with inner workings of their system under Test, so do their biases about… Continue reading
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Layered Testing Automation “skills” & what makes the onion whole ?
From the perspective of automating Testing in complex mission critical products , the skills that you need are layered, nuanced and complimentary like an onion. Layer 1(The bulb) – Tooling layer Learning and applying Programming & Tooling skills in Testing is hard Layer 2 – Critical thinking & decision making layer What is harder is… Continue reading
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Career decision making – Choosing a pizza that comes with slices missing
Stick around and fight or quit ? Why is it worth continuing ? These are quintessential questions, applicable both to professional and personal context How do you decide you next career step ? What decision making model do you apply ? Backstory for this post Having been in independent Testing/QA contracting for ~ 5 years… Continue reading
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Beginner Linux Shell scripting exercise for Testers
I have beginner level competency in using shell scripting for day to day Testing/Automation jobs, as I tend to use Python for it. A recent task forced(sometimes that is a method that works 🙂 ) me to start learning Shell scripting a bit, so sharing it here. Hope it helps other Testers to start exploring… Continue reading
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Dishonest Performance Metrics
Dishonesty in metrics occurs where Team metrics have ambiguous goals, are used to achieve ends other than what they were introduced for, are arbitrarily applied or can not be traced to business outcomes/personnel growth Dishonest metrics arouse frustration, instil fear or even worse, perpetuate dishonesty in staff ( e.g. when people start to game the… Continue reading
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Looking for adaptability while hiring Project Leaders
“Agile/Lean” ways of working are fast becoming the norm in enterprises (especially software) , but you still see emphasis on “control, predict and linear plan” style of project management. Project management mechanics are important and no denying that delivering in sprints is not a guise to not plan at all ,however,I have observed a lot… Continue reading
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Root patterns of organisational silos
The single most influential factor that dedicates if organisations succeed at their goals, is the ability of their business units/Teams to work together in alignment towards those goals I have learnt that behaviours that bring misalignment, e.g siloed behaviours (defensiveness, back stabbing, closed attitudes towards new ideas ,ambiguity on accountability) are symptoms of something systemic… Continue reading
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If you just had 1 Testing question to hire/reject a QA candidate
It is unfair to judge a candidate through just one challenge or exercise, but image that you are in a (non-violent & harmonious) Squid Game situation and as the hiring manager you were only allowed one Testing challenge to pose to the candidate , what would that be and why? Something that is related to… Continue reading
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Should your Team have a dedicated Scrum Master or Agile coach?
Temporarily – yes Dedicated to your Team full time, as a permanent role – respectfully, no From my agile practitioner experience, I believe there are 2 reasons for not having a dedicated full time Scrum Master or an Agile coach on your cross-functional squad/Team Coaching needs are inherently impermanent . For example, A Senior Team… Continue reading
CATEGORIES
Recent Posts
- Fostering blameless communication of Quality
- Observability – advocacy heuristics for Testers/Devs “new” to the system
- Layered Testing Automation “skills” & what makes the onion whole ?
- Career decision making – Choosing a pizza that comes with slices missing
- Beginner Linux Shell scripting exercise for Testers
About Me
I’m Sunjeet Khokhar
An experienced People Leader,Practice Lead and Test Manager .
I am driven by the success of people around me, am a keen student of organisational behaviour and firmly believe that we can be better craftspeople by being better humans first.
the reluctant tester 